


Crack the shutters

by burying_songs



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-12
Updated: 2010-11-12
Packaged: 2017-10-24 00:49:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burying_songs/pseuds/burying_songs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season Six AU; What if Dean & Sam said yes. Warnings for three different tenses & Castiel ;)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crack the shutters

_you are already gone when the end comes. quiet, still. so still. i’ve noticed the lack of stillness, the constant pull beneath the ribs, that swelling and fullness of a heartbeat. a reminder of life, often ignored but echoing in every movement. a welcome yet unsettling humming beneath the skin. i’ve felt it here in this cage i still barely understand and i feel the space in you that it has recently fled._

 _your skin no longer thrills to the touch, no rush of heat moves to these places your brother’s hands grip with all the messy and imperfect fumblings of human love. you don’t feel the shivers that shake his frame, too divine to succumb yet too mortal to do anything but. maybe you are too far already to hear the words on his breath, words kept hidden and denied for lifetimes. you cannot hear the entreaties that spill from him in crimson and black as my knees meet the earth before his fallen magnificence, just as you cannot know the joy and gratitude i can hardly bear to keep from my eyes._

 _it is a fitting end, a better death cannot be wished or granted. he doesn’t understand; his hand has found the ruin of your grace and his voice—his voice. were that my Father and the Host could experience the divinity and forgiveness i alone am able to bestow in return for your sacrifice. i have faith, a faith i try to pour into him, this warrior of the Lord, as wine from an altar, to light him up from inside with the glory of He whom has been served justly and well. you do not see my smile._

-;-

Warmth. It shown from the white of curtains of which Sam had no memory; neither from childhood nor the near-constant nightmare that followed. The light was too soft, too gentle; even in the meekest of dawns sunlight was never so kind. He stretched into it, felt for the dark hollow inside him and found it gone, suffused with the golden air of the dawn. It pressed him, overwhelmed, into the embrace of the bed, a comfort to be savored. His skin sparked against the coolness of the untouched sheets and Sam drew back from the edge of the mattress, burrowing deeper beneath the heavy blankets.

Even with his eyes closed, quiet and safe, Sam knew he wasn’t alone. He also knew that soon he would shift, turn, twist, because the light was splashed across his brother like paint and jealously burned in his chest for every moment that it touched Dean while he did not. True enough, there it was, gold on the wings of Dean’s shoulder blades, the toffee stain of freckles across his arms, the soft hair of his nape. The even rise and fall, wax and wane of Dean’s breath, sleep deep and sound. Every morning, the same. Another gift, and if Sam yet prayed he would have sung hymns of thanks.

Instead he offered his shaker song with his hands, ran them where he liked, the edge of Dean’s scalp, the length of his reach up under the pillow, the slope of his spine down past the sheet. The hidden wilderness of his brother’s body, this country he had never dreamed to know, warmed beneath his offering palms, rolled and shifted as Sam moved closer on the bed, drawing the sheet down and Dean towards wakefulness.

“V’more minutes, Sam.” The words rough, like wool thick and heady.

“Okay, Dean.” Sam smiled against the exposed rise of his brother’s flank, pressed his mouth to the place where Dean’s thigh met the curve of his ass. Closing his eyes, Sam rubbed his cheek against the sensitive skin, felt himself crack and dissolve into the awe of this simple pleasure. A hand in his hair and he was pulled from his worship, tugged and fit against his brother’s chest, chin, mouth. He took Dean’s offered heat, shoved close and closer still, the world narrowed to every point where their skin touched.

“Sam, Sammy,” Dean breathed between the kisses Sam pressed like promises against his lips. “Sam, go back to sleep.”

Sam laughed into the crook of Dean’s neck. His fingers begged contrition along the rosary of Dean’s ribs. Sleep. Here, in the glory of this light, the thought was absurd. “Can’t. Rather do this.”

A deep sigh and with it, Dean’s surrender. He captured Sam by the hair, by the wrist, by the heavy joy that spread throughout Sam’s body. Nothing so perfect as this, Dean whole and safe and beautiful, not in any life Sam could remember. He moved willingly, borne by his brother’s gentle, insistent hands. Dean braced above and shined down on him like the sun; it felt too much to stare for long, but Sam looked and looked and burned his eyes until his brother was all he could see.

“Hi.” Dean was staring right back, mouth curved into the best sort of secret. Sam was perfectly content, perfectly at peace.

“Hi,” he replied, felt his answering grin grow wild and thought I know where we are.

-;-

Castiel turns from his post at the window. For all his remembered longing, such intimacies should remain unwatched. He leaves the brothers for the moment, certain that they will be kept secure until his return. Although he is drawn to this place perhaps more than any other, Castiel’s presence is interminably required elsewhere.

Heaven is at War. This is neither surprising nor unexpected; the cast iron of rebellion set to boil as soon as the disappearance of God became the subject of whispers. All came to pass as Gabriel had predicted; arguments about the rule of Heaven grew to skirmishes, grew to all out battles, angel killing angel for the first time since the Fall. Not all who remained in Elysium were faithful, not all were true. But Their Father is forgiving if not forgetful; He hated waste and wept to see His favorite son cast down. Perhaps if He had not shown such infinite mercy, Castiel would not have to stand by while his brothers destroyed one another.

A lack of corporeal host renders Castiel’s wry amusement at the notion less obvious. If he could smile, he would. God’s compassion, His grace, it was what made Him, what made them all. He could no more banish repentant angels than damn humankind for their multitude of sins.

Gabriel, Raphael, Zachariah, Michael: the deaths of so many Archangels have thrown both sides into frenzy. As one of the few angels to have seen the implementers of the apocalypse, Castiel has per force risen to a rank much greater than any to which he had aspired. He’d been happy to serve his faceless Father, happier still to serve humbly and without question. Now he is a commander of battalions, the armies of heaven awaiting his commands. It is an unwanted honor, one that tears him away from the quiet guardianship he would prefer.

After Michael slew Lucifer—and lost himself in the act—the Host abandoned earth, returning to their celestial posts as a single brilliant flash. Castiel alone remained to care for the vessels. Vessel, rather, as the sword through Lucifer’s heart killed Sam just the same. There were no precedents, nothing written beyond the final battle for the future of humanity; perhaps the prophets had simply assumed that the burden of an archangel was too much to bear, even for a mortal such as Dean Winchester. The prophets had been wrong.

Dean had breathed, but barely, all of his words for the empty frame that once held his world and its ruin. Castiel had been given a choice; as he placed his palm across Dean’s eyes, filling him with God’s light, he believed he was choosing well. Seeing what he’s seen in the time that’s passed since that night, he still believes.

Castiel keeps the Winchesters safe, hidden from angels and demons alike. He is not alone in this; millennia old and he has come to discover that fealty is still rewarded in paradise. The Winchesters have enemies even here in the rustling of his brother's wings, but enmity cannot erase their triumph, destroying the Morning Star at the behest of a powerless Heaven. This peace, this shelter, it is less than they’re due but Castiel knows it’s more than either have dared to hope.

Secrets are unheard of here, nothing kept by souls at rest. They are not sea-changed, merely stripped bare. Death’s greatest alchemy is the neutralizing of equivocation, the banishment of half-truths and denial, leaving behind only that which is desired and that which is feared. Despite what the songs and stories say, shared eternity is rare; two souls with desires so matched as to be perfect mirrors. As such, it is something miraculous to behold—perhaps God’s single faultless creation.

There are some among his comrades who do not accept this ending for Dean and Sam, who rail against this blasphemy towards God and his Creation. They say it is the Devil’s work, Lucifer’s final revenge, but Castiel who has felt this Grace once, maybe twice, in his long lifetime, would not tear the brothers from this, their just reward.

He feels the insubstantial kiss of the curtain as it brushes against him, bringing with it the sound of soft laughter from the room beyond. There are other moments, other glimpses he might catch, but despite the intrusion, Castiel always finds them here. It’s the innocence, the absolute tranquility that draws him to this open window, the figures inside as they wake to the sunshine of a perpetual new morning. He watches the wonder in their hands as they rejoice in one another, the greatest reverence that can be shown to their Creator. Their joy, their peace, is a solace in itself; he comes here to rest as much as anything else.

But as with all things, his reverie must pass. A stirring of the wind at his side alerts him to Elemiah’s presence. The seraph waits until Castiel has gestured to speak.

“Brother, you’re needed.”

Castiel looks back one last time, sees the love dancing from the figures inside, the way it emanates from them like sunlight. He watches them for a long moment, then turns back to Heaven.

“I’m ready.”

He follows Elemiah into the dawn.


End file.
